Rising demand for funding is becoming a challenge

Overview of findings

A descriptive analysis of grant application figures between 2011 and 2023 shows that:

• The rising demand for SNSF funding is attributable primarily to higher requested budgets per application in its Project and Career funding schemes.
• The higher budgets are due, among other things, to an increase in durations per application and, in Project funding, also to increases in team sizes.
• The share of approved applications in all submitted applications is decreasing – from over 50% to just over 30% for Project and Career funding.

Demand for SNSF funding has been growing continuously for years now, and rose particularly dramatically in 2016, as the yellow line in the graph below shows. However, the federal funding provided to the SNSF (blue line) has not increased in equal measure over the same period. The difference between requested funding and available resources is growing ever larger. Or, to put it another way: ever increasing demand cannot be met to the desired extent.

In order to probe the possible influencing factors behind this development, we have undertaken a descriptive analysis of the applications. For the period 2011 – 2023, we have analysed all the SNSF’s funding schemes with a focus on the two largest funding categories: Project funding and Career funding.

The big picture

As our analyses show, demand for funding is increasing in almost all SNSF funding schemes. The Project and Career funding schemes have a particularly strong influence on the overall demand.

• In the case of Projects, demand over the last 10 years has increased from 840 million to 1,500 million francs (orange line in the graph below) and
• In the case of Careers (purple line) from 490 million to 1,100 million francs – with the exception of the surge to almost 1,500 million in 2018, which arose as a result of two overlapping calls for proposals.

These are the two types of funding applied for the most by researchers and research groups, with up to 3,000 applications a year. Alongside Project and Career funding, another area responsible for the strong increase in demand in 2015 to 2016, which can clearly be seen in the first figure, was the National Research Programmes (NRPs).

Demand not driven by number of applications

Our analysis shows that the increasing demand for funding is not being driven by rising numbers of applications. With just a few outliers, the number of applications for Project funding hovers around 2,000 to 2,500 per year, as the orange line in the graph below shows. For Career funding, too (purple line), there is no clear upward or downward trend to speak of overall.

What is driving the rise in demand for funding, if not the number of applications themselves?

More funding is being requested for each application

The analysis shows a clear result. The level of funding being requested per application is growing substantially, as the following graph attests. This is true for both Project (orange line) and Career funding (purple line).

In the case of Projects, in 2016 and 2017 we can see a sharp increase from an average of 400,000 francs per application to, suddenly, just under 600,000 francs. The reasons for this increase include, among other things, the funding reforms that came into effect in 2016: the SNSF modified the scheme to allow applicants to request longer project durations of up to four years instead of three, as well as allowing them to add project partners. This was the SNSF’s response to the increasing relevance of collaborative research and the needs of the researchers.

In the case of Career funding, we can see an increase from 2017 to 2018: the average amount of requested funding rose from approx. 300,000 francs to almost double that number. Among other things, this development can be attributed to the introduction of the Eccellenza and PRIMA schemes. With these two schemes, applicants were able to request more funding than for other Careers schemes, thanks to possible duration of up to 5 years. In addition, in the same year as the two new schemes were introduced, the SNSF put out the last call for proposals for its Professorships scheme, which was replaced by Eccellenza.

Researchers are applying for longer project durations

As expected, since the Project funding reforms allowing longer project durations, there has been an upward shift in the durations requested. This is shown by the orange line in the graph below. Until 2016, the average duration requested in Project funding applications was just over 30 months. Since 2017, applicants have been taking advantage of the longer duration option, with an average requested duration of near 44 months.

For the Career schemes, too, application durations are strongly influencing demand. Since 2018, there has been a clear increase in the average durations requested in Career funding proposals (purple line). Up until 2018, the average requested term had remained constant at around 24 months per application. With the introduction of the Eccellenza and PRIMA schemes in 2018, which each have possible maximum durations of 60 months, the requested project duration for the Career schemes rose overall to near 38 months on average.

The influence of the longer durations on demand becomes clear when they are explicitly taken into account when looking at the level of requested funding per application. The graph below thus shows the development in requested funding per application-year.

The increase in demand for Project funding is levelling off (orange line) from an average of 141,000 francs per application and year to 191,000 francs. If we control for the requested duration per proposal, the increase in the level of requested funding also comes out lower for Career schemes (purple line). Nonetheless, the residual increase is not trivial, and is to be investigated more closely.

More project partners

With the 2016 Project funding reforms, grants were allowed to have project partners in addition to (co-)applicants. Since then, applicants have been taking up the option to apply for Project funding in teams with multiple project partners: until 2016, the teams applying had an average of two members; since 2017, teams have had three or more members, as the orange line in the graph shows. This, alongside other factors, could explain the residual increase in requested funding per application and year. For additional analyses on project partners, see: More networked research thanks to project partners: a look at the first years.

Consequences of rising demand

With demand rising and not enough funding available, the SNSF can either fund fewer applications or reduce the funding awarded per application. After a critical look at the requested funding, in some cases cuts may be made per application. However, as a matter of principle the SNSF strives to make the funding for approved applications available at the amount requested.

This is reflected accordingly in the success rates. The declining success rates for the Project and Career funding schemes show that the share of approved applications in all submitted applications is falling: from over 50% to just over 30% for these schemes, with big differences between the funding schemes in particular in the Career area. The SNSF plays a subsidiary role in Career funding and orients its support more towards the number of approved applications than a constant funding rate. On the one hand, lower success rates mean increased competition. On the other, they can also mean that high-quality applications are not being funded.

Funding rates, which show the amount of awarded funding as a percentage of all requested funding, are also showing a downward trend. However, this decline is not as pronounced as that in the success rates.

Descriptive analysis: conclusion

• Rising demand is primarily attributable to increases in requested budgets per application in the Project and Career funding schemes.
• The higher budgets are due, among other things, to an increase in durations per application and, in Project funding, also to increases in team sizes. With insufficient funding available, this means that the SNSF will not be able to fund as many applications, resulting in greater competition.